Thursday, April 10, 2014

It’s official: Silver Airways has served notice that it intends to pull service from the Hattiesburg-Laurel Regional Airport.Hattiesburg-Laurel Executive Director Tom Heanue said he received a phone call from airline officials Wednesday afternoon to let him know that Silver intended to file 90-day Notice of Termination papers.Heanue said Silver informed him that it was shutting down the bulk of its Atlanta operations.“I have been expecting this,” Heanue said. “Now, all we can do is wait and see who bids when the (Department of Transportation’s) ‘Request for Proposals’ is issued.”Hattiesburg-Laurel wasn’t the only Mississippi airport affected by Silver’s actions Wednesday. Meridian, Tupelo and Greenville also will lose service from Silver, as will Muscle Shoals, Ala.“While we have been privileged to be able to serve these cities from Atlanta for the past year-and-a-half, multiple factors have combined to make it economically impossible for us to continue flying in these markets,” Silver Airways President/Chief Executive Officer Dave Pflieger said in a release. “New federal regulations related to flight and duty limitations, as well as increased requirements related to new-hire pilot certification, have had the unintended effect of creating a nationwide shortage of regional airline pilots.“Those facts, coupled with significantly lower-than-expected passenger enplanements in most of our Altanta-network cities have made it uneconomical for us to continue serving these communities.”Silver began providing connections from Pine Belt to Atlanta in late 2012, stepping into the void when Delta Air Lines announced in the summer of 2011 that it intended to drop 24 routes in smaller markets across the nation, including Hattiesburg-Laurel, Greenville and Tupelo in Mississippi.Silver Airways, a regional carrier based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was awarded the routes as the Essential Air Service subsidy jumped from about $1.4 million annually to about $2.9 million.But the marriage between Silver and Hattiesburg-Laurel has been rocky.It’s official: Silver Airways has served notice that it intends to pull service from the Hattiesburg-Laurel Regional Airport.Hattiesburg-Laurel Executive Director Tom Heanue said he received a phone call from airline officials Wednesday afternoon to let him know that Silver intended to file 90-day Notice of Termination papers.Heanue said Silver informed him that it was shutting down the bulk of its Atlanta operations.“I have been expecting this,” Heanue said. “Now, all we can do is wait and see who bids when the (Department of Transportation’s) ‘Request for Proposals’ is issued.”Hattiesburg-Laurel wasn’t the only Mississippi airport affected by Silver’s actions Wednesday. Meridian, Tupelo and Greenville also will lose service from Silver, as will Muscle Shoals, Ala.“While we have been privileged to be able to serve these cities from Atlanta for the past year-and-a-half, multiple factors have combined to make it economically impossible for us to continue flying in these markets,” Silver Airways President/Chief Executive Officer Dave Pflieger said in a release. “New federal regulations related to flight and duty limitations, as well as increased requirements related to new-hire pilot certification, have had the unintended effect of creating a nationwide shortage of regional airline pilots.“Those facts, coupled with significantly lower-than-expected passenger enplanements in most of our Altanta-network cities have made it uneconomical for us to continue serving these communities.”Silver began providing connections from Pine Belt to Atlanta in late 2012, stepping into the void when Delta Air Lines announced in the summer of 2011 that it intended to drop 24 routes in smaller markets across the nation, including Hattiesburg-Laurel, Greenville and Tupelo in Mississippi.Silver Airways, a regional carrier based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was awarded the routes as the Essential Air Service subsidy jumped from about $1.4 million annually to about $2.9 million.But the marriage between Silver and Hattiesburg-Laurel has been rocky.